Contacts Update

Good stuff Dave.
Eventually you won't even be aware of them in your eyes. Beware of this - the first time you wake up after accidentally sleeping in contacts, you'll think you've developed cataracts.

Fortunately, gratuitous blinking will soon re-moisturise your eyes and lenses. (or use some of the cleaning solution as eye-drops if you have some handy)

Really shouldn't the score be Dave: 1 and then Dave's Brain gets a point for every time it said no to plastic on the eye? If so what's the real score? =P

Uh-Yeah, I know how that feels. When you try to take the contacts out, it feels like suction cups.

Also: Depending on what kind of cleansing fluid you use: Never ever forget to neutralize it!! I used to use some stuff was essentially a 3% Hydrogen peroxide solution (Oxysomething). While it did a nice job of disinfecting the contacts it also made reacted heavily and quite painfully proteins if you forgot to neutralize the solution, which - of course - I regulary did. And for sometime there was no way to tell whether or not you did or didn´t forgot until you felt the first burning pain.
Ah,nothing better than poking and groping panicly in an eye you can hardly open! Sure gives the old heart a certain kickstart at 6 a.m. Luckily I think those kinds of Cleansing Fluids got banned (at least in Germany)

Why do I get the feeling that this isn't the first time Dave's Brain has lost. Boom.

That was funny. Brought me 15 years back to when I first had to put contacts on. Took forever hehe.. You get used to it quickly though. Now I'm at the point where I'm thinking about laser surgery...

I can see the video 30 years from now, "Dave was told he would never be able to get his dang contacts in on the first try..."

a stupid eye-touching phobia

I flirted with the idea of contacts once long ago, but before I made any progress I read two separate reports of guys in power stations getting zapped with high voltage. They shook themselves off, got cleared by the docs, and went home to sleep it off. Upon removing their contacts, they also removed their corneas, because the contacts had been spot-welded to them.

(All together now: Ewwwww!)

Yeah, I know, such a cheery thought to finally de-lurk on. But the moral of the story is, some phobias are good.

I've been wearing contacts for years, and I remember the learning curve when I tried to get them in the first time. Now I do it when I'm not even fully awake. Take heart Dave, you're not alone.

As to the cornea pulling abilities, please see Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/cornea.asp

As I recall it, I read the reports in 1989 in the Proceedings of the IEEE [ieee.org] (although it could also have been IEEE Spectrum [ieee.org]; student rates made it cheap to subscribe to both), and they described high potential/low amperage electrocutions. Consensus among my professors in the High Voltage Lab was that it was plausible (in the Mythbusters sense that if you throw enough explosives at the problem, it could happen).

As this was long before Snopes (or even the Web), I'm going to give myself a pass for not double-checking at the time.

But I'm still not getting contacts.

Every year, about 300 people die from electrocution (including lightning strikes) in the USA. In comparison: 43 000 people die in road accidents. So what are you more afraid of?
Losing your eyes after touching some high-voltage, or losing your life just by getting outside?
BTW: I'll ask my professors as well... they're surgeons ;)

Oh, my little Davey is becoming such a big boy now!